Rabbis in Trousers

“Now of course, Christ was not requiring rabbis to wear trousers (everyone wore robes) any more than He was requiring them to be cranky and sullen in the marketplaces, refusing to return greetings. As mentioned above, the point of His warning was the common temptation to have an undue love of such things. But He was identifying a sin which has been common to the ministry of all eras, — practicing religion and spiritual leadership for an audience of men — vainglory. Christ describes numerous examples of the basic sin — that of looking for applause from the cheap seats and not seeking the approval of God. But in different eras, the inhabitants of the cheap seats have applauded different things. We must be very careful here. We no longer care how broad someone’s phylactery is, but we do comment on how underlined his Bible is. We no longer cheer when he calls himself rabbi, we just nod approvingly when he calls himself a brother. Way to be humble, bro. If he keeps it up, we could start calling him the Rev. Bro. the problem is ecclesiastical grandstanding, and the raw material for this is always available at hand” (Mother Kirk, pp. 197-198).